Phnom Penh

The city's founding story belongs to Lady Penh, a wealthy widow who is said to have found sacred images in a tree floating on the river in the 14th century and raised a hill, phnom, to house them — the origin of Wat Phnom and of the name Phnom Penh. After the Khmer court abandoned Angkor in the 15th century it moved south to this meeting of waters, and the settlement served as a royal capital for a period before the court shifted to Longvek and then to Oudong.

For three centuries Phnom Penh was a trading town of Khmer, Chinese, Cham, Malay and Portuguese merchants at the junction of the rivers. King Norodom returned the capital here in 1866, under a French protectorate declared three years earlier, and the French laid out boulevards, quays, villas, a Central Market and the grid of numbered streets that still orders the city. By the 1960s, independent Cambodia's capital was known for the modernist buildings of Vann Molyvann and a confident national culture.

War ended that. American bombing of the countryside and the civil war swelled the city with refugees, and on 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh and emptied it within days, driving its people into the countryside. A school in the south of the city became the S-21 prison, and its prisoners were killed at Choeung Ek. Vietnamese forces entered in January 1979 and people walked back to a looted, half-ruined city. Recovery was slow through the 1980s and 1990s; since the 2000s the capital has grown fast, with towers, satellite developments and a population several times what it was on its return.

Phnom Penh sets the national standard in language, dress and ceremony. The royal court survives in the palace on the quay, with ceremonies such as the Royal Ploughing Ceremony in May, and the classical arts — the Royal Ballet's apsara dance, the pinpeat orchestra, shadow puppetry — are taught and performed here, having been rebuilt almost from nothing after the 1970s, when most of their masters died.

Buddhism orders the year. Monks collect alms at dawn, pagodas fill for Pchum Ben in September or October as families bring rice for the dead, and the Water Festival in the autumn draws enormous crowds to the riverfront for boat races that mark the reversal of the Tonlé Sap's flow. The city also has old Cham Muslim, Chinese and Vietnamese communities, with mosques, temples and associations of their own, and a small Catholic congregation.

A young, connected population has built a contemporary culture alongside the traditional one: galleries and independent cinema, hip hop and rock bands that sample the pre-war pop of Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea, cafés and skate parks. Manners remain formal: the sampeah greeting with palms together, respect for age and monks, modest dress at pagodas and the palace, and a strong dislike of raised voices.

About 2.1 million people lived in the capital at the 2019 census, and the number rises every year with arrivals from the provinces. The day starts before six with markets, noodle stalls and exercise groups on the riverfront, slows through the heat of the early afternoon, and picks up again at dusk, when the quay, Koh Pich and the Olympic Stadium terraces fill with families, joggers and aerobics classes.

The economy runs on government, banking, construction, tourism and the garment factories on the city's edges, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers, mostly women, many of them living in rented rooms and sending money home. Property development has reshaped whole districts, filling lakes and building satellite towns on former wetland, and Chinese investment has been a large part of it. Motorbikes and tuk-tuks carry most of the traffic, and new flyovers and ring roads have not kept up with it.

The city's pressures are those of rapid growth: congestion, flooding after heavy rain where drainage has been built over, air pollution, evictions and land disputes, and a wide gap between the new towers and the crowded neighbourhoods behind them. Alongside this, public services, schools and universities have expanded, and a generation born long after the Khmer Rouge years now makes up most of the population.

Phnom Penh has given its name to kuy teav Phnom Penh, the pork-broth rice-noodle soup with minced pork, offal, prawns, fried garlic and a plate of herbs that is the standard breakfast, eaten at pavement tables from before dawn. Its rival is bai sach chrouk, thin slices of marinated pork grilled over charcoal and served on broken rice with pickled cucumber and a bowl of clear broth. Nom banh chok, cold rice noodles under a green fish gravy of lemongrass and turmeric with raw vegetables, is carried through the streets in baskets.

The city's restaurant dishes are the country's best known: fish amok, steamed in banana leaf with coconut and kroeung, the lemongrass and galangal paste at the base of Khmer cooking; beef lok lak, seared cubes of beef with a lime and pepper dip using Kampot pepper; samlor korko, the thick vegetable and fish soup; and prahok, fermented fish paste, in dips and marinades. Num pang, the baguette filled with pâté, pork and pickles, is a French inheritance.

Markets are where most of this is eaten. The art deco Central Market and the Russian Market both have food sections, and streets of stalls sell grilled skewers, fried noodles, sugar-palm cakes and fruit. Drinks run to iced coffee with condensed milk, sugar-cane and palm juice, and Cambodian lager, while Boeung Keng Kang and the riverfront hold the craft-beer and cocktail bars.